Montelibero builds society based on a libertarian principles with local cultural foundations.
Freedom Reporter presents projects that are trying to find a ways towards a free society, or a slightly more free society than the current one in which people live today, even in so-called democratic societies. This time we present the MONTELIBERO project.
The main goal of the Montelibero project is „to build a sustainable successful society on a national scale, based on a combination of libertarian principles with local cultural foundations, which will be a convincing and effective practical example, demonstrating the global competitive advantages of ideas of freedom, non-aggression and self-organization“.
Montelibero is an intentional community in Montenegro inspired by the idea and the successes of the Free State Project in the United States. Its members see their shared values of liberty as basic community building blocks and their aim is to form a mini-society that exemplifies these values.
Montelibero was started by Ukrainian agorists, the community of „panarchy“, and ex- and present members of the Libertarian Party of Russia. Russian-speaking residents from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan currently make up the majority of the project.
Montelibero is also gaining the attention of supporters from countries, such as the UK, Lithuania, Israel, Montenegro, France, and India.
Unlike the Free State Project, however, Montelibero’s goal is not to reach a critical mass of libertarians in order to form a strong voting bloc. As mostly foreign nationals, their involvement in local politics would be frowned upon.
Therefore, the goal is to become good role models, to show themselves as good, friendly, and respectful neighbors, and thereby work to spread libertarian values to the surrounding communities as well.
Montelibero’s flagship project is MTL City – a startup town intended as the new home and base for most Monteliberans.
Its site is located near the city and port of Bar, close to the Adriatic coast. Bar Municipality is currently the region of Montenegro where most Monteliberans have moved, though the community remains spread out further across the Montenegrin coast.
MTL City will include a townhouse district, a commercial and office quarter, and a district of private detached houses. A privately-built road connects MTL City to the rest of Montenegro.
A separate 3-ha plot of land at a different location also belongs to Montelibero, which is to be used for agriculture or industry in the future. Montelibero features a fledgling local economy and the EURMTL stablecoin which can be used in everyday transactions and facilitates external investment.
FREEDOM REPORTER INTERVIEW WITH
THE MONTELIBERO PROJECT
(Victor Korb & Any Ehin asnwered)
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FREEDOM REPORTER: What is the main goal of your project?
MONTELIBERO PROJECT: We want to change the world for the better, of course… Seriously, we set ourselves the goal of testing in practice the hypothesis that libertarian and panarchist values, principles and methods really give the best results in solving most, if not all, social problems. At the local level, we have already proven that ancaps can build roads and create private courts. But our ambitions go far beyond the boundaries of compact communes – an open social experiment called the Montelibero project will be considered a success if and when such practices reach the level of an entire country, and we manage to obtain a model of full-scale and irreversible libertarian reforms that is attractive to the whole world.
Who is the project intended for? For which candidates and from where?
The ideological basis, the frame of our community is the non-aggression principle (NAP). The ideal legal situation that we strive for is the maximum protection and implementation of individual sovereignty and the sovereignty of voluntary associations with a guarantee of free withdrawal from them (after fulfilling all obligations, of course). In practice, this makes it possible to ensure peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation of participants with a wide variety of ideological positions – from libertines and anarcho-communists to conservatives and ultra-capitalists. As long as participants recognize that the freedom of one ends at the tip of the nose or the boundaries of the property of another, they remain in the same community, in a common favorable environment for cooperation and innovation.
In cultural and country terms, our community is positioned and developing as a global extraterritorial network. It includes entrepreneurs from Ukraine and Germany, investors from India and Israel, builders, IT and media specialists from Russia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Siberia and so on. The community is still predominantly Russian-speaking, but we are trying to maintain and strengthen its international character – by developing English-, German- and French-language communication platforms, and actively introducing effective translation tools.
How many people is the project intended for?
It’s global. If we limit ourselves to more visible project guidelines, then, according to rough estimates based on global experience, to achieve real results on a national scale, the participation of at least 15-20 thousand activists in the movement is necessary. As of June 2024, the activist core is estimated at around 200 members (of which 124 are registered members of the Montelibero Association), and the looser periphery of the community at around 2,000.
Where is the project territorially located or should it be located and why exactly there?
Montelibero is a transnational, online community that you can join and actively participate in from anywhere on Earth. Montenegro was chosen as the supporting territory on which attention and efforts are concentrated. In short, the choice is determined by the optimal combination of factors that allows us to count on the success of libertarian reforms. Small size, convenient location, ethnic diversity, developed democracy and tolerance… Montenegro turned out to be the only solution to a serious research problem.
In Montenegro, project participants live in different cities: Budva, Bar, Ulcinj, Podgorica, Herceg Novi, etc. The largest part of the territorial community is concentrated in Bar. We selected this coastal municipality as having the greatest development and economic development potential. In the same area, our own settlement is being built, the future city, the calling card of the entire project – Montelibero City (more often called MTL City).
How should freedom for residents be ensured in your project? What new/additional freedoms – compared to life in a „normal“ western democratic state – would the new residents of your project gain in this project?
We are building a self-organizing community of free people. Therefore, the main efforts are aimed at creating, developing and scaling technological solutions that ensure the freedom of individuals and their voluntary relationships, allowing them to regulate these relationships without humiliating dependence and pressure from statist structures. According to many independent experts, it is the developed tokenomics, or blockchainization of relationships, that is one of the main “highlights” of the Montelibero project.
With the help of unique blockchain technologies and tools, community members solve most current problems, including all kinds of asset exchanges, cross-border transfers, crowdfunding of commercial and non-commercial projects, consumer lending, corporatization, real estate tokenization and much more. In addition to purely economic transactions, the tools of an independent notary have been mastered and practiced, as well as the formalization of other types of relationships – friendship, volunteering, marriage, cooperation, etc. Blockchain allows you to do all this with maximum convenience, accessibility, reliability, transparency and in a decentralized manner.
Would your project result in a perfectly free society or only a partially free society for your citizens?
“A completely free society” is probably still some kind of ideal, goal, benchmark that is worth striving for, but can hardly be achieved. Certainly not in our lifetime and unlikely in this century. Yes, we strive for the maximum level of individual sovereignty of free individuals, ensured by voluntary relations and reliable protection from any manifestations of aggression. Therefore, we support any, even the most modest steps in this direction. And our project is just such a step, allowing us to at least slightly (and in some aspects quite significantly) increase the level of freedom in the community and the degree of its protection from external and internal threats.
What would be the main features of this new, greater freedom and its main benefits for residents?
Without delving into the theoretical jungle, we note that the concept of personal freedom is inextricably linked with the very concept of personality, that is, a subject capable of realizing himself and acting in accordance with his own ideas. Any attempts to deprive a person of the opportunity to make independent choices, no matter how plausible pretexts may justify this, take away or limit personal freedom.
We unite to jointly defend our space of freedom, voluntarily helping each other – exactly to the extent that each participant in such a voluntary association considers this optimal. According to the win-win model.
Yes, we are dreamers. But at the same time, we are realists – and we understand perfectly well that the success of our social experiment will be possible only when we manage to create a sufficiently bright and attractive example of a free society “in kind.”
A society in which people satisfy the needs of all levels of Maslow’s Pyramid in the best possible way, with the highest qualitative and quantitative indicators. We want Montenegro, as a result of libertarian reforms, to demonstrate an economic miracle and join the group of countries with the highest quality of life index. And reaching the country level should happen extremely organically – through gradual scaling and institutionalization of practices tested at the local level.
How is it or should it be guaranteed that these new/extraordinary freedoms (or elements of a free society) obtained in your project cannot be eliminated/taken away by the state on whose territory is the project located?
Of course, there are no 100% guarantees of protection from statist aggression. But it is possible and necessary to control known risks and constantly increase the overall level of security.
Our freedom is protected by the fact that most of the significant activities in the project are formalized or implemented in the “blind spot” for statists – on the Internet and on the blockchain. It is important to note that all this activity is absolutely legal, from the point of view of Montenegrin legislation.
The security of our project is enhanced by its internationality, extraterritoriality and decentralization. This distinguishes it from its analogues – predominantly or exclusively territorially localized libertarian projects – villages, communes, cities. It is almost impossible to successfully attack our DAO Montelibero Association and, especially, the wider Montelibero movement. Because in the first, personal data is maximally decentralized, and in the second there is no fixed membership at all.
In Montenegro itself, our participants strive to build and maintain the most loyal relationships with residents as possible and to adapt and integrate into the local economic, socio-cultural and everyday spheres as quickly and as closely as possible. After all, this is one of the key methods and factors for the success of the project as a whole.
In general, we understand that we will have to fight a lot for the sovereignty of our participants and the community as a whole. We are aware of our dependence on the external environment and our duty to improve this environment if we do not want to wait for the moment when it comes to “improve” us according to its plans and rules.
What stage is your project at now?
It depends on what scale to evaluate. On a global or country scale – at a very early stage. For now, we are focused on the primary concentration of resources, the involvement of participants, developing the processes of self-organization and the formation of capable, productive and sustainable social structures that could begin to actively scale and actively influence the external environment. But by the way, when we started this project in 2021, we immediately assumed that it would take at least five, or even ten years to gather strength and resources, get organized, ensure the relocation of the pioneers and their arrangement of life in a new place…
When could the project reach the stage when at least the first above-standard (compared to a „normal“ western democratic state) freedom for the residents will start to be evident?
Well, this stage has already been fully reached, since, as mentioned above, the Montelibero project community exists and develops on the basis of modern blockchain technologies. Within our extraterritorial contractual jurisdiction there is no hierarchy and “superior-subordinate” relationships; many administrative and technical functions are carried out automatically or semi-automatically and with maximum transparency. All relationships are based on voluntary contracts and open market principles.
The system no longer has borders, licensing or taxes, there is no dictate or power monopoly in any of the spheres – on the contrary, cooperation is encouraged and stimulated based on the free exchange of ideas and resources and the selection of optimal solutions. Therefore, we can confidently state that in Montelibero there are already significantly more tools, technologies and practices for implementing and protecting personal freedom than outside it, even in comparison with most liberal democracies. And, at the same time, there are still very few of them so that you can calm down and rest on your laurels.
Summary and visualization: https://montelibero.org/2021/06/02/why-montenegro/
The concept of the Montelibero project is presented in more detail on the website montelibero.org/montelibero-concept-of-strategy-en/.
